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Citation:Yeomans, L (2016) Imagining the Lives of Others: Empathy in Public Relations. Public RelationsInquiry, 5 (1). 71 - 92. ISSN 2046-147X DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/2046147X16632033
Link to Leeds Beckett Repository record:https://eprints.leedsbeckett.ac.uk/id/eprint/2207/
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Abstract This paper asks how we might theorise empathy in public relations (PR) in the light of a widespread ‘turn’ towards emotion in the academy, as well as in popular discourse. Two distinct notions of empathy are explored: ‘true’ empathy as discussed in intercultural communication, is driven by a human concern for the other in order to understand experiences, feelings and situations that may be different from our own; whereas ‘instrumental’ empathy, reflecting a self orientation, is said to characterise much neoliberal market discourse in which corporations are urged to understand their customers better. Thus, while empathy may seem highly desirable as a means to enter into dialogue with an organisation’s publics, particularly during times of social upheaval and crisis, it is important to pay attention to empathy in public relations discourses including whose goals are served by empathetic engagement; and the type(s) of empathy called upon within a PR context. A literature review identified a socio‐cultural definition of empathy as ‘imaginary effort’. A review of the public relations literature, however, found that while empathy is considered an important principle and personal attribute, notions of empathy, with a few exceptions, are under‐explored. Nonfunctionalist, socio‐cultural research which examines the meanings that practitioners associate with empathy is distinctly lacking; therefore in order to gain further insight into empathy, two sources of data were explored. The analysis of a popular online practitioner blog showed that other‐centred empathic skill is discursively framed as instrumental in achieving clients’ business objectives. The analysis of three empathy statements drawn from 12 in‐depth interviews with practitioners revealed complex empathic discourse in practitioner‐client relationships. While the findings are limited to illustrative analyses only, this paper challenges researchers to develop conceptualisations and perspectives of empathy as imaginary effort in public relations.
Keywords Emotion, empathy, public relations, critical‐interpretive paradigm, phenomenology, discourse
Introduction
What kind of empathy is suggested in public relations discourse? Empathy is valorised in political and
business discourse as a commodified interpersonal skill and it would appear that such discourse has
entered public relations practice. In examining empathy in public relations discourse, this paper adopts
a critical-interpretive perspective, which assumes discourse as a disciplinary mechanism; a ‘system of
representation’ which governs the ways in which a topic is talked about and socially constructed (Hall,
2001: 72). The paper comprises a literature review which highlights a research agenda for this
compelling, contemporary topic, followed by a discussion of emerging, though limited, empirical
evidence which demonstrates the need for further work in this area. The literature review begins by
examining contemporary interest in, as well as conceptualisations of empathy before going on to assess
how empathy is conceptualised in the public relations literature. The methodological problems
associated with researching empathy precede an analysis of select practitioner texts that illustrate
empathy discourse in public relations practice. A discussion and conclusion follows.
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The ‘affective turn’ or the turn to emotion in organisation studies, cultural studies, and the social
sciences is widely acknowledged (e.g. Putnam and Mumby, 1993; Turner and Stets, 2005; Ahmed,
2007; Greco and Stenner, 2008; Pedwell and Whitehead, 2012). Emotions influence and shape every
area of human activity – including decision-making, persuading, selling, and negotiating (Fineman,
1997). Emotions are used to build interpersonal relationships and empathy is an important quality in
building relationships (Rogers, 1995). A popular term for empathy is ‘stepping into another’s shoes’ to
experience the feelings that another person might feel in relation to a situation that they confront.
Empathy has taken centre stage as a focus of contemporary concern; it is heralded as an essential
emotional skill and is relevant to ‘a wide range of issues, such as the nature and conditions of morality
and moral judgments, how we understand one another, what makes certain political candidates
appealing…’ (Coplan, 2011:41). While Western sociopolitical discourses frame empathy as a solution
to a number of social ills and as a ‘central component of building cross-cultural and transnational social
justice’, the discourse of neoliberal market ideology encourages companies and their employees to
empathise with the needs of their customers in the quest for opportunities and growth, potentially
reducing empathy to an instrumental relational technique (Pedwell, 2012: 280-287).
Therefore, while the notion of behaving empathetically towards others is seen as socially desirable
and perhaps the mark of emotionally intelligent behaviour in contemporary social life, there are
problems associated with empathy and in particular the nature of the relationship between the concepts
of self and other. Concern in the social sciences appears to centre on what constitutes ‘real’ or ‘true’
empathy in social life. Coplan (2011), for example, writing from an interactional perspective, classifies
self-orientated empathy as ‘pseudo-empathy’ because it requires less imaginary effort to truly
understand the other person. Meanwhile, Pedwell’s (2012) examination of the discourse of empathy in
politics, society and business demonstrates that the framing of empathy denotes different motivations
according to different societal goals, raising questions concerning true interest in the ‘other’ (motivated
by social justice goals), versus self-interest (motivated by market goals). While approaching empathy
from different theoretical perspectives, both writers share a concern with inauthentic empathy.
The problem of authentic/inauthentic empathy and instrumental discourse in public relations is a
central concern of my paper and this concern arises from a seemingly casual use of ‘empathy’ in
practice discourse and imprecision in the public relations literature. Before going on to analyse
empathy in PR in greater depth, it is important to first examine concepts of empathy in an attempt to
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explain why the concept is ‘difficult to grasp’ (Calloway-Thomas, 2010: 8) and ‘slippery’ (Coplan,
2011: 44). Mapping concepts of empathy alongside related concepts such as sympathy, role-taking and
perspective-taking provides frameworks for a critique of empathy in public relations practice discourse
as well as in the public relations literature.
Conceptualising empathy
Much of the literature on empathy emanates from the fields of psychology (e.g. Eisenberg, 2000; Smith,
2006), cognitive neuroscience (e.g. Baron-Cohen and Wheelwright, 2004; Lawrence et al, 2004;
Baron-Cohen, 2012) and moral philosophy (e.g. Hoffman, 2000; Goldie, 2011; Prinz, 2011). While
these perspectives examine empathy at the level of the individual, they do not successfully address the
particular challenge of the emotional turn and empathy in particular which requires ‘the imaginative
leap into the minds of others’ (Clark, 1997:34).
Clark’s ‘imaginative leap’ definition draws on the work of three sociologists – Weber (1947;
verstehen or ‘understanding’), Mead (1934; ‘role-taking’) and Scheff (1990; ‘outer search’). Support
for the ‘imaginative leap’ notion of empathy is also found in the work of Coplan (2011:40) who,
drawing on a body of empirical evidence from social neuroscience (e.g. Decety and Hodges, 2006)
argues for a definition of empathy as a ‘complex imaginative process through which an observer
simulates another person’s situated psychological states while maintaining clear self–other
differentiation’. Further, Calloway-Thomas (2011:11), an intercultural scholar, for whom an
understanding of ‘difference’ is central to the purpose of empathy, invokes Vico’s ‘sufficient effort of
imagination’ conceptualisation, specifically to understand the values and visions of past generations
(Berlin, 1991).
The ‘imaginative leap’ notion resonates with contemporary advice to PR practitioners who are urged
to imagine the lives of others in order to empathise – both on an interpersonal level with clients and
journalists, and when thinking about targeting specific publics (Matthews, 2009; Holmes, 2012; Parker,
2013). A socio-cultural definition of empathy is therefore argued for in this paper in an attempt to
understand what empathy might mean for the PR practitioner in making such an ‘imaginary leap’.
Only relatively recently has empathy, derived from the nineteenth century German, Einfuhlung, and
coined by the American psychologist Tichener (1909) taken on its current meaning (Calloway-Thomas,
2010). Earlier theorists, including Adam Smith and David Hume, are cited as using the concepts of
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empathy and sympathy interchangeably, although Clark (1997) notes that social scientists still disagree
on how these concepts are used. Clark (1997), a sociologist, drew on a range of research strategies,
including the analysis of fiction, as well as detailed empirical studies to explore the micropolitics and
microeconomics of sympathy as an emotion in everyday life. Indeed Clark’s interpretation of empathy
as a precursor to sympathy (i.e. instead of vice versa), is an example of how these two particular
concepts can be confused.
There are three broad approaches to empathy: cognitive, physical and emotional (Clark, 1997).
Following Adam Smith, Clark regards cognitive empathy as a precursor to physical and emotional
empathy, although numerous individual and social factors, including the degree to which a person
shares similar characteristics with the other person, such as ethnicity, nationality and social status, play
a role in how much actors are motivated to empathise. Cognitive empathy as defined by Clark (1997:
36) ‘involves the thought or recognition that another person is in difficulty’. Cognitive empathy has
been extensively researched in cognitive neuroscience, with prominent researchers such as Baron-
Cohen and Wheelwright (2004) identifying the problems that arise from a lack of cognitive empathy
among people with autism; while highlighting the psychopath’s advanced cognitive empathy and lack
of emotional empathy for their victims (Baron-Cohen, 2012). Cognitive empathy is therefore the
capacity to understand that another person has a problem, and to recognise what might be causing that
problem. Physical empathy is defined as ‘experiencing the distress of another at a physical level’
(Clark, 1997), also known as ‘emotional contagion’ or ‘catching emotion’ (Coplan, 2011). The
expression of physical empathy might involve unconsciously ‘mirroring’ the behaviour of another
person, and given that it is an automatic response, it may change our own emotional state. Emotional
empathy is feeling what other people might feel or ‘actually having an emotional reaction to a person’s
plight’ (Clark, 1997: 45). For some intercultural communication scholars, who are concerned with such
as Calloway-Thomas (2010), it is the ‘feeling’ level of empathy which really marks out empathic skill,
particularly in a situation where the cultural other is suffering, and where being other-regarding
(cognitive empathy) is not enough for true empathy to take place.
Following the work of Hochschild (1983), Clark’s studies of sympathy also draw attention to the
implicit ‘rules’ or socio-cultural norms of everyday life that strongly influence how we should feel in a
given situation, and the emotional effort that is required to align our feelings to the occasion, if they do
not already align. Clark (1997) highlights the need for impression management (Goffman, 1959) or
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surface acting (Hochschild, 1983) to display the appropriate demeanour towards the other person if
emotional or physical empathy is not experienced. The notion of surface acting draws attention to the
routine nature of fake empathy in everyday life and the circumstances under which public relations
practitioners put fake empathy to use through their professional interactions with clients (Yeomans,
2011).
Critiques of empathy, however, question the idea of stepping into the other’s shoes, arguing that an
actor must have some knowledge of the other’s mental state in order to empathise, otherwise they are
merely projecting themselves in that situation (Scheler, 1958 cited in Aho, 1998). Self-orientated
perspective taking, argues Coplan (2011), is pseudo-empathy. Pseudo-empathy makes attempts to
understand the other person’s situation, but in doing so the actor does not truly imagine the other
person in their situation, but imagines themselves in that situation. In other words, we adopt an
‘egocentric bias’ in the empathising process, which is subject to errors in predicting another person’s
psychological state (Coplan, 2011: 55).
Writing from an intercultural communication perspective Bennett (1998) makes the distinction
between sympathy, which he regards as self-orientated and based on The Golden Rule (‘do unto others
what you would have done to you’), and empathy, which is other-orientated. True empathy is therefore
complex and involves, for example, the actor on the one hand consciously recognising the similarities
and differences between self and other as well as having knowledge about the other (Bennett, 1998;
Coplan, 2011). True empathy is seen as a process that involves a temporary letting-go of the self in
order to inhabit, or share the feeling world of the other. Such imaginative effort may transcend time
and space so that it is possible to overcome cultural differences (Calloway-Thomas, 2010). The
temporary loss of the self in order to identify with another may be likened to Hochschild’s (1983)
notion of ‘deep acting’ whereby the emotional labourer conjures up emotional memories with which to
focus on the situation of the client or customer. Advocates of true empathy (i.e. at the level of feeling)
argue for this degree of identification with the other because it can help to shift understandings of
power relations in social hierarchies and compel empathisers to recognise their complicity and act on
their ‘responsibilities and obligations’ to others where unequal relations exist (Pedwell, 2012:283).
However, the harmful psychological consequences of emotional labour in the workplace are well
documented and Bennett (1998) argues that without the required knowledge and skills with which to
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consciously recognise the similarities and differences between self and other, the individual could be
susceptible to harm.
The political nature of empathic discourse, the ‘the ambivalent grammar of empathy’, further
problematises empathy (Pedwell, 2012: 294). Social justice goals, argues Pedwell (2012), were
famously articulated by President Barack Obama in his early speeches and in his 2006 book The
Audacity of Hope in which he referred to the United States of America as suffering the effects of an
‘empathy deficit’ and the need for the American people to develop greater empathy with those less
advantaged than themselves. In making his appeal to American citizens for greater empathy, he
employs the rhetoric of a ‘common humanity and equality’ in a vision of mutual empathy between the
powerful and the powerless (Pedwell, 2012: 285). However, the ambivalence of Obama’s empathy
rhetoric, Pedwell argues, is noticeable when he calls upon neoliberal, market ideology to encourage
American citizens to ‘cultivate’ empathy in order to realise their ‘full potential’; not only because
cultivating empathy is the ‘right thing to do’, but ‘also because empathy, as an emotional competency,
has become part and parcel of being a self-managing and self-enterprising individual within a
neoliberal order’ (Pedwell, 2012: 286). Numerous book titles espouse empathy or emotional
intelligence broadly as a core skill to provide competitive advantage in a global economy: Wired to
Care (Patnaik, 2009); The Empathy Factor (Miyashiro, 2011); and Big Hearts, Big Profits (MacDonald,
2013), to name a few. Olson (2013: 49) argues that ‘the self’ under neoliberalism is separated from the
notion of being part of a common citizenry, and is instead free to ‘pursue economic self-realization’:
thus, the appeal to empathy has to be linked to the vision of highly competitive workers building
emotional skill, who are then able to trade their emotional competence, or ‘emotional capital’, into
monetary capital (Illouz, 2007: 66).
In the light of a burgeoning empathy ‘industry’, comprising popular texts generated by politicians
and management consultants alike in response to a perceived worldwide ‘empathy deficit’, as
articulated by Obama in his early speeches (Obama, 2006, cited in Pedwell, 2012), there must be some
scepticism exerted here, particularly if the main beneficiaries of empathy appear to be individual
empathisers seeking self-actualisation through an improved emotional skill capacity on the one hand,
and businesses seeking to ‘walk in the shoes of customers’ to increase opportunities for growth and
profit. In other words, the empathic relationship is potentially one-way and self-orientated instead of a
mutual seeking of common ground because it is humanely the right thing to do in order to reduce
IMAGININGTHELIVESOFOTHERS:EMPATHYINPUBLICRELATIONS
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power inequalities and to overcome a variety of social and cultural differences and misunderstandings.
That is not to say that businesses, CEOs and PR practitioners cannot and should not be humanely and
genuinely empathic where the situation demands empathy, although this in turn raises the question
‘how does one know true empathy?’ since empathy has to be enacted in a convincing manner, whether
instrumental or not. My point is that when empathetic capacities or skills are transformed into a
‘technology of the self’ (Foucault, 1988 cited in Motion and Leitch, 2009:91-92); as an instrumental
technique of PR practice and career-building, then it should be a concern in terms of the effect it has on
the individual and on the practice.
Role‐taking: an alternative concept to empathy
The discussion has, so far, centred around the concept of empathy in everyday life, and some of the
problems raised by explanations of empathy, including the use of empathy within a business context. I
now go on to discuss role-taking, a concept closely related to empathy, in order to assess whether an
alternative concept might be more appropriately used in relation to the PR context. Clark (1997), for
example, regards empathy as role-taking (Mead, 1934). Role-taking refers to the socialisation process
through which children pass to acquire the skill of empathy. The socialisation process involves three
stages which are: play, games and the generalised other (Aho, 1998). The first stage, play, involves
the child adopting the roles of significant others in their lives (e.g. mother, father, teacher). Through
play, the child learns the meaning of what it is to be in the social world and thus anticipate others’
actions. The second stage, games and team sports, in particular, enable empathy to be developed
further: the different players’ roles and teams’ positions are considered together and constitute the
meaning of playing the game. Adults continue to refine their empathetic skills through party-going,
argues Aho (1998: 59-60), citing Simmel (1964) in the observation that the ‘heart and core of party-life
is artful conversation, rapid word-play: deftly reading one another’s signs, and responding to them with
discretion, tact, and sensitivity’. Such sociable acts function to rehearse ‘for the serious affairs of
business and politics’.
The third stage of Mead’s role-taking theory refers to the ‘generalised other’ interpreted as the
‘culture of a situation (values, beliefs, norms) that provides a framework or perspective for evaluating
self’ (Turner and Stets, 2005:103). Role-taking within broader cultural frameworks involves actors
adjusting their conduct accordingly; masking aspects of themselves in relation to how they anticipate
IMAGININGTHELIVESOFOTHERS:EMPATHYINPUBLICRELATIONS
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others might see them. The reflexive nature of role-taking provides an understanding of how PR
practitioners behave in professional situations; an idea closer to Goffman’s (1959) strategic self-
presentation where the actor considers the impression they are making on people they regard as
important, referred to earlier.
Empathy in public relations literature
The public relations literature broadly fits into the categories of ‘functionalist’ and ‘nonfunctionalst’
research (Edwards, 2012). ‘Excellence theory’ (Grunig, 1992) represents the large and dominant body
of functionalist research in public relations. This research is characterised by a systems theory
framework and of central importance, the alignment of public relations with formally structured
organisations; their objectives and ideologies, including the ‘effectiveness’ of PR practitioners and
their campaigns (Edwards, 2012). Therefore, much functionalist research could be said to be
‘instrumental’ in its motivation, given the dominant discourse of the need for public relations research
to recommend solutions to problems in public relations practice, such as a lack of access to the Board
(Vardeman-Winter, 2015). Therefore, in examining empathy in public relations discourse, we should
be mindful of the paradigms that underpin the discourses: functionalist, nonfunctionalist as well as the
‘blurred’ boundaries between these two paradigms (Edwards, 2012:11).
Within the public relations literature, empathy is seen as a human variable (attribute or trait) or an
interpersonal process, capacity or skill which is learned and developed. It is a key principle in engaging
publics, providing an ‘atmosphere of support and trust that must exist if dialogue is to succeed’ (Kent
and Taylor, 2002: 27) and building organisation-public relationships (Bruning, Dials and Shirka, 2008).
Empathy is regarded an important part of an organisation’s response in crisis communication
(Martinelli and Briggs, 1998; Seeger, 2006). Furthermore, there are attempts to measure empathy as
part of ‘personalizing’ organisation-publics relationships (e.g. Bruning, Dials and Shirka, 2008: 29).
While there are very limited attempts to explore empathy conceptually within the public relations
literature, particular strands of thought can be teased out of the relatively limited literature to determine
how empathy is viewed. What follows is not an exhaustive appraisal of empathy in the PR literature,
but an indication of the research paradigms it has so far aligned with.
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Empathy as part of intercultural dialogue
Kent and Taylor (2002:27) first mentioned empathy as part of the dialogic process in pursuing a
‘communal orientation’ and yet it received very little conceptual definition in this much-cited paper. In
recent work, however, Kent and Taylor (2011: 68-71) draw attention to the salience of empathy in
interpersonal and intercultural communication scholarship, and its relevance in transcending the
ethnocentric worldview of PR practitioners in global contexts, particularly in ‘third culture building’
(Casmir, 1978). Third culture building emphasises dialogue and ‘shared meaning construction [with
publics] and shared outcome’ in dealing with ‘chaotic, unpredictable environments’ (Kent and Taylor,
2011: 69), thus advancing the notion of empathy as part of a ‘dialogic orientation’ which ‘takes on an
empathic orientation to the “other” and seeks to understand his or her motivation, values and
expectations’ (p. 70). Further, the authors argue, it is part of relationship building that is instigated from
a nonfunctionalist, co-constructionist approach.
Empathy as a process in communication planning
An example of empathy discussed within the functionalist paradigm is Windahl and Signitzer’s book
on communication planning. In this, Windhal and Signitzer (1992: 21) observe that ‘empathy is more
valuable to a communicator than sympathy’ offering a definition: ‘the capacity to understand how other
people perceive and interpret reality […] without giving up one’s own view of this reality’. This
definition aligns fairly closely to ‘other-orientated’ definitions of empathy (e.g. Bennett, 1998; Coplan,
2011). Both empathy and social perspective-taking, which is ‘the ability to understand the options
available to others’, are considered important processes for the communication planner who often has
‘no direct contact with the people with whom they communicate’ (Windahl and Signitzer, 1992: 21-22).
These authors go on to hint at the problems of disparities, or dissimilarities, between sender and
receiver in communication, citing social perspective-taking (Reardon, 1987) as particularly helpful in
attempting to address these disparities. However, in conceptualising empathy and social perspective-
taking as cognitive processes (‘capacity to understand’ and ‘understand the options available to others’),
there is no ‘getting at’ the level of feeling involved in the imaginary effort of empathy discussed earlier
in this paper (Clark, 1997; Calloway-Thomas, 2010; Coplan, 2011).
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Empathy as role‐taking
A concept closely related to empathy, and explained earlier, is that of role-taking (Mead, 1934).
Elsewhere, Yeomans and Topić (2015) note that Culbertson (2009: 3) defines role-taking as the
process of “‘psyching out”, understanding, or predicting another’s attitudes, behaviors, and points of
view’. Although Culbertson’s understanding of role-taking clearly points to a self-orientated, even
manipulative, version of empathy, he argues that it is important for PR practitioners to focus on (i.e.
identify, measure and control) the processes of interpersonal role-taking, rather than merely examining
the outcomes of interactions. Described in this way, role-taking, like social perspective-taking, is a
form of empathy, but there is no suggestion that the actor lets go of the self and engages with the ‘other’
through feeling: rather, the practitioner retains full, cognitive control – standing back to observe the
minutiae of their role-taking interactions with the other person and its effects upon that person.
Empathy as a personal attribute or trait
Recent functionalist research by Tench and Moreno (2015) and Jin (2010) approach empathy from an
attribute or trait perspective. Tench and Moreno’s qualitative study, involving 53 semi-structured
interviews in six European countries, identified empathy as among the top three ‘personal attributes’
across four communication manager roles. While this European ‘competency’ study asked participants
whether empathy as a personal attribute could be developed, was an inherent trait, or subject to
upbringing (eliciting mixed responses), there is no conceptual exploration of empathy in this paper.
As Yeomans and Topić (2015) have noted elsewhere, Jin’s (2010) study identified empathy as a core
emotional trait and communication competence of a ‘PR leader’. Empathy, according to Jin (2010:
179), enables leaders to both assess employees’ emotions and respond to them ‘with sensitivity and
understanding’. Empathy also enhances PR leaders’ communication effectiveness with top
management. However, theories of emotion, and empathy in particular, remain under-examined.
Furthermore, when measuring preferences for certain types of leadership behaviour through a
questionnaire, there is an inherent bias towards the notion of empathy as a ‘good thing’: each of
Boyatzis’s (2001) empathy statements in Jin’s study might be regarded as socially desirable behaviours,
a limitation also raised by scholars in cognitive neuroscience (Baron-Cohen and Wheelwright, 2004).
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From the foregoing review of the public relations literature, a functionalist, instrumental tendency
towards emotion and empathy emerges, however, this is also true of much of the broader literature on
emotion in management and organisations. The ‘EQ’ (emotional quotient) literature, popularised by
Goleman (1996), gave rise to an interest in the concept of emotional intelligence which, as Burkitt
(2015: 146) argues, is ‘highly seductive’ in a business environment which requires employees to be
more flexible and use their emotion intelligently. Within such a business environment, emotional
competency (or EQ) contributes to ‘productivity and profits’ (p. 148). It is therefore of little surprise
that the very few empirical studies of empathy in public relations tend to view it as a personal attribute
or trait, and a communication skill or competence which can be developed and measured.
As mentioned, the orientation in much of the literature on management and organisations is
instrumental rather than critical: emotions are conceived as ‘within-person phenomena’ to the
detriment of societal issues (Fineman 2010: 24). ‘Emotionologies’ defined by the British sociologist
Stephen Fineman as ‘politico-ideological constructs’, refer to institutionally-approved emotional
discourses which are often reflected through the media (Fineman, 2010: 27). An example of
emotionologies is the way that society feels towards specific social groups, for example, migrant
workers, but also occupational groups such as bankers, estate agents and public relations practitioners.
In examining emotional discourse, and the discourse of empathy in particular, we can interrogate how
PR practitioners are both shaped by emotional discourse as well as actively construct it.
A microsociological study of an occupational group such as public relations (PR) consultants should
take account of the ways in which PR consultants emotionally construct their work in relation to
professional, business and societal discourse(s), including emotional discourse. In doing so I draw
upon the work of Sieben and Wettergren (2010: 8) who identify a research agenda for a body of work
that is characterised as interpretive (‘construction and meaning of emotion (management) in the social
life of organizations’) and poststructuralist (‘emotion management as a discursive formation: power
effects of management and research practices’). By examining empathy discourse in public relations
texts at the micro and macro levels, we can begin to theorise empathy.
Methodology
For the purpose of this paper, texts were analysed using a critical discourse analysis (CDA) approach.
IMAGININGTHELIVESOFOTHERS:EMPATHYINPUBLICRELATIONS
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According to Motion and Weaver (2005), critical approaches to public relations are concerned with
power, and in particular how discourses in public relations practice may be explained in relation to
broader socio-cultural and political contexts, as well as the professional context (Edwards, 2014).
Following Foucault, I view discourse as a ‘system of representation’ or the rules governing the ways in
which a topic is talked about and socially constructed (Hall, 2001: 72). Moreover, discourse produces
knowledge through the meaning and practices relating to topics; these meanings and practices are
rooted in historical contexts and are subject to ‘discursive shift’ over time (Hall, 2001: 74). In
producing their own discourses, actors are simultaneously influenced by, and subjected to the rules of
discourse, itself a form of power. A Foucauldian approach to empathy must therefore consider its
multiple meanings and practices, which are in turn shaped by discourses associated with certain
practices. By questioning the discourse of empathy in public relations practice (and how in turn it has
been shaped by broader empathy discourses), it is possible to identify how empathic discourse in public
relations ‘produces and employs concepts, objects, and subject positions’, including the kind of social
relations with the ‘other’ it is intended to construct (Mayes, Pini and McDonald, 2012: 845). The
analytical method used in this paper follows the ‘microdiscursive’ critical questioning approach
articulated by Motion and Weaver (2005:54) as: ‘who is used to express a particular viewpoint and why
they are used to perform this discursive role, which institutions, if any, do they represent, and what are
the positions and viewpoints from which they speak?’
In order to gain an understanding of the ‘rules’ of empathy discourse in public relations practice –
how empathy is publicly constructed among practitioners – I selected a piece from a popular and
apparently influential (‘20 to 25,000 unique users a month’) UK blog PR Moment as indicative of the
professional context of public relations (PR Moment, 2014). While a blog is a relatively ephemeral
text, I argue that a popular blog of this kind contributes to the structuring of the profession, through
discourse, in a similar way that popular business and management texts influence practice, as
mentioned earlier. (See also Matthews, 2009 and Holmes, 2012 as further examples of online empathy
discourse in public relations.)
For illustrative purposes in this paper, I also used empirical data taken from a micro-sociological
study approached within a critical-interpretive paradigm using an emotional labour theory perspective
(Yeomans, 2013a; Yeomans, 2013b). This small-scale exploratory study examined how six public
relations consultants experienced, practised and understood professional relationships with their clients,
IMAGININGTHELIVESOFOTHERS:EMPATHYINPUBLICRELATIONS
12
journalists and colleagues. This project was initiated in 2006 because little was known about everyday
interactions within the PR consultancy environment (See also Pieczka, 2002 and Sissons, 2015.) In
adopting an interpretive phenomenological approach, this study addresses research into ‘PRP’
lifeworlds to discover the meanings that practitioners assign to their practice (Hodges and Edwards,
2014:98). From this interpretive phenomenological study, empathy emerged as a recurrent, salient
theme of emotion management in PRP relationships with clients and journalists. Within the constraints
of this paper, three empathy statements from a body of 12 interview transcripts were chosen to
illustrate empathic discourse relating to the clients of three PR consultants: John, Emma and Alison.
As a means of accessing the nuanced emotional dimensions of participants’ professional interactions,
a series of open questions was developed. Some questions sought to elicit specific examples of how
participants handled ‘difficult’ professional relationships, how they felt in particularly difficult
situations, and why they handled relationships they way that they did in order to understand the ideal-
typical courses of action of practitioners in their lifeworlds (Schütz, 1970; Schütz 1972).
Adopting a positivist paradigm and protocol might have elicited socially desirable responses. In
cognitive neuroscience, where empathy scores have been measured through a self-report postal
questionnaire, Baron-Cohen and Wheelwright (2004:171) acknowledge the possible limitation of an
individual’s self-reported beliefs of empathy ‘or how they might like to be seen or think about
themselves, and that this may be different to how empathic they are in reality’. As a qualitative
researcher in the sociology of emotions, Clark (1997: 261) makes a similar methodological point.
However, it is important to acknowledge that getting beyond the ‘professional mask’ in researching
the emotions using interpretive qualitative methods is also problematic. Both Clark (1997) and Lutz
(2007), an anthropologist, argue that empathy and emotion in Western societies is intertwined with
cultural assumptions about emotion (i.e. as subjective and female gendered), therefore ‘emotional talk’
will be shaped by social, cultural and occupational norms. Coupland et al (2008) argue that
professional emotional display rules for masking negative emotions differ according to professional
group and that emotion is used as a strategic resource to influence others’ perceptions of that profession.
PR practitioners may be more alert to issues of self-presentation (Goffman, 1959), performativity
(Butler, 1990) and the need to control their ‘display’ of emotional language and the enactment of
empathy in particular.
With one notable exception in my study (the most senior, experienced and confident participant), the
IMAGININGTHELIVESOFOTHERS:EMPATHYINPUBLICRELATIONS
13
‘emotional talk’ of the six PR practitioners in discussing their professional role was relatively
‘controlled’ and ‘muted’ (Coupland et al, 2008): the word ‘frustrating’ was used as a synonym for mild
irritation through to expressions of embarrassment and anger when describing particularly difficult
situations. In my study, agency directors – practitioners’ bosses – were highly influential socialising
agents in providing emotional cues to their staff, thus setting the tenor for appropriate emotional
discourse. Therefore, I inferred that a degree of masking took place with me as researcher since
participants’ accounts of their emotions were ‘politically sensitive performances of their selves’
(Coupland et al, 2008: 343) as serious-minded and aspirational individuals. Two practitioners in my
study had been awarded Young Practitioner of the Year by one of the professional bodies, and a third
had received an industry award for a successful campaign on behalf of his client.
In order to develop deep and rich understandings of practitioners’ lifeworlds, the study comprised a
small sample of participants (Creswell, 2007): four female and two male agency practitioners who
were based in a region of England. Only two were known to each other. Participants represented
different levels within agency hierarchies, from a female senior account executive at the lower end
through to a male account director at the top end. Their ages were between 23 and 34. This age band
represents the largest group of PR consultants in the UK (CIPR, 2010). All were educated to degree
level, with four out of the six possessing either a first degree or masters in public relations. As white,
middle-class and youthful graduates, participants shared common cultural and social capitals (Edwards,
2008) which they brought to their professional roles.
After entering PR as graduates aged 21-22 all participants had received regular promotions which
put them in responsible positions by their mid-twenties. Notable among the sample was Graham, who
aged 23, had been promoted to account manager with responsibility for account executives and interns,
just one year after graduating. His attentiveness to the emotional cues from colleagues above and below
him in the agency hierarchy, and emotional display, was particularly acute since he was still learning
the ‘rules’ of what to say to colleagues, clients and journalists, and how to say it, ‘Listen for the way
they [“senior people”] do it, the sort of nuances of the way they say “I’ve got a story you might be
interested in” and that kind of thing. And then just take it an adapt it to my own sort of phone manner
and my own sort of conversation.’
A total of 12 semi-structured interviews took place between 2008 and 2011. To begin with, I
conducted face-to-face hour-long interviews with each participant in order to elicit descriptions of their
IMAGININGTHELIVESOFOTHERS:EMPATHYINPUBLICRELATIONS
14
‘lifeworld’ as PR consultants from their own perspectives (Kvale and Brinkmann, 2009). These
interviews were followed up with a second round of interviews lasting between 20 and 45 minutes,
which helped me to develop a richer understanding of the participant’s perspective, using the first
interview transcript, as well as participants’ online diary entries and CV information as the basis for
further discussion. Data were analysed inductively and thematically. To validate my findings, I sent a
2,000 word ‘descriptive account of practice’ to participants as part of the member checking process.
Their comments on this document, including points of refutation and affirmation, were considered as
new data (Creswell, 2007). All the names of participants were changed to protect anonymity. On
reflection, and taking into account the methodological problems of qualitative methods such as
intensive interviews, a broader range of methods is recommended in future studies.
The discourse of empathy in public relations practice
The discourse of empathy has entered public relations practice. This is perhaps no surprise given that
public relations practitioners’ practical knowledge is influenced by a mix of data, including an
‘extrapolation of ideas from management gurus’, the business press and business peers, as well as data
from research companies. Through the diffusion of these ideas at the practice level, professional
training sessions produce and reproduce ‘popular knowledge’ (Pieczka, 2002: 305). Given the plethora
of popular business and management texts on the subjects of emotional intelligence and empathy which
contribute to the ‘emotional turn’, it is thus reasonable to speculate that ideas from these texts and
online sources have found their way into in-company training sessions and thus everyday professional
discourse, alongside other PR ‘tools’ that are understood to be essential to practise PR effectively
(Pieczka, 2002). In analysing the following texts, my central question is: what kind of empathy is
suggested by public relations empathy discourse?
Empathy in the PR agency: the PR Moment blog
In 2013, the PR Moment editor Daney Parker published a blog piece with the headline ‘Is empathy the
most important skill in PR?’ The blog is noteworthy not only because it talks about the importance of
empathy and how it can lead to better relationships in public relations, but it also provides advice on
how to develop empathy as a skill. Parker as blog author does not offer her own opinion nor does she
provide any contextual information on the topic, but constructs her narrative from a series of lengthy
IMAGININGTHELIVESOFOTHERS:EMPATHYINPUBLICRELATIONS
15
quotations from four senior PR agency personnel. The narrative is followed by a list of ‘sound bites’ of
‘why empathy is important to PR’ from a further four representatives working in PR. The following
analysis is limited to the quotations from the four senior PR agency personnel.
The questions raised by these narratives include: who gets to talk about empathy and why? Which
institutions do they represent? Who are the objects of this discourse? What are the positions and
viewpoints from which they speak – in other words, what kind of empathy discourse(s) are represented
in the PR Moment blog? The analysis starts with the speakers in this account. In the first part of the
blog, those quoted are all senior PR agency spokespeople, and they appear to be ordered in sequence
according to level of seniority and possibly agency size, starting with the Chairman of the Good
Relations Group, followed by an associate director of Hill and Knowlton, an international public
relations firm. Although it might be argued that empathy is important to all areas of PR, only PR
agency representatives are selected for this blog. No justification is offered for this choice, nor is there
an explanation as to why empathy is important in any business relationships. Implicit, however, is the
commercial focus of the PR agency world, and the need to manage professional relationships,
particularly clients. Turning now to the empathy discourses represented in the four quotations, these are
summarised in Table 1 and discussed below.
Table 1. Summary of empathy discourses in the PR Moment blog.
Speaker 1. Chairman 2. Associate director
3. Head of consumer
4. Managing director
Empathy discourse
Relationships are the engines of success and empathy is critical today. You need to understand people you are dealing with and where they are coming from. Empathy as listening and understanding
Forget your own ego and focus on the other person. Find out what makes them tick. Think about their pressures. Empathy as a learned, interpersonal skill
Imagine the lives of others to create relevant campaigns in order to meet client’s business objectives. Empathy as commodified imagination
Empathy is a skill that cannot be faked. Master the skill if you want to do well in your career. Empathy as essential to career success
IMAGININGTHELIVESOFOTHERS:EMPATHYINPUBLICRELATIONS
16
The subject positions taken in these discourses are largely those of senior people offering advice, but
also issuing warnings of the consequences of trying to build relationships without empathy. The
objects of these statements, we might conclude, are young practitioners, or at least practitioners who
are ambitious and want to aspire to the roles occupied by the speakers themselves. But what kind of
empathy discourses are represented in the blog?
The first empathy discourse associates empathy with understanding in a relationship. Relationships
are depicted as ‘engines of success’, suggesting a connection between empathy and the ‘bottom line’,
thus emphasising the commercial nature of the PR relationship. Understanding, in turn, is associated
with being ‘thoughtful’ and ‘acting considerately’ towards others. Although these terms do little more
than suggest politely listening to the other person to ensure that their viewpoint is grasped, the quote
‘understanding where they are coming from’ implies a certain amount of imaginary effort on the part of
the practitioner.
The second empathy discourse represents empathy as a learned, interpersonal skill. Here, empathy
is not just about understanding the other, but involves a process of consciously forgetting ‘your own
ego’ and thinking about the pressures of the client or journalist. Further still, the discourse is that of
helping the other person ‘reach their goals and objectives’, suggesting that an ‘other’ perspective must
be developed to understand the psychology of the other person: ‘what makes them tick’.
The third empathy discourse represents empathy as ‘imagining the lives of others’. The emphasis on
imagination is thinking about the lives of those who are the target publics of campaigns. ‘Imagination
brought back down to earth’ and ‘relevant campaigns’ suggests that imagination is being put to
commercial use in supporting the client’s objectives: imagination here is represented as commodity.
The fourth empathy discourse represents empathy as a tool for career success in public relations.
Furthermore, a warning is issued: if practitioners cannot master the skill of ‘genuine’ empathy, or are
caught out ‘faking it’ by their clients or any other ‘key target recipient’ then their career might be
shortlived.
All four empathy discourses in the PR Moment blog share an instrumental, commercial concern with
the ‘other’: empathy within the PR context is put to use to build better interpersonal relationships with
clients as well as to imagine the lives of the targets of public relations campaigns in order to create
effective campaigns. Although there is a mention of forgetting ‘your ego’ in discourse 2 and the need
for ‘genuine’ empathy in discourse 4, there is no suggestion that empathy in any of the four discourses
IMAGININGTHELIVESOFOTHERS:EMPATHYINPUBLICRELATIONS
17
presented is exerted at the level of feeling: at best, empathy is a learned, interpersonal skill which
appears to require concentrated, exclusive focus on the ‘other’ during the key moments of interaction.
In other words, a more cognitive focus is apparent.
Making the imaginary leap: practitioner accounts of empathising with clients
The interview participants in my study on professional relationships in public relations (Yeomans
2013a) found it helpful to adopt an empathic mental attitude with a client in order to achieve the results
desired, usually in the form of media coverage: this meant understanding their client’s daily pressures
and navigating around the client’s own workload and status within their organisation. In the account
below, John’s explicit reference to using empathy about his client’s rough ferry crossing suggests a
conscious imaginary effort is being deployed to elicit the desired support from his client in order to ‘get
actions moving’. The account perhaps best illustrates an ‘instrumental’ use of empathic interaction:
‘on the back of the humour, he knows I am on his case’.
[…] he said he’d been on a ferry it was the worst journey he’d ever had, and everyone was sick and we had a joke and a laugh and all this kind of thing, and we had some humour around that and I empathised around the fact that he’d had a rough journey. But at the same time, I needed something from him to get... to get actions moving. I shared with him my concerns and on the back of the humour, he knows that I am on his case because equally he knows that if he doesn’t respond to my questions we can’t action it and so he’s then going to challenge us for not doing the job…
Empathetic strategies such as John’s were a means of taking control to achieve media coverage,
sometimes regardless of the client’s ability to assist in the process. This is also illustrated by the
following account of Emma’s ‘busy client’. Unlike John, Emma does not explicitly refer to using
empathy but nevertheless describes a process whereby she has to use the information she has about the
client in order to imagine how busy he is while working on his press release:
So I just researched that, wrote the whole thing. I didn’t even speak to him ‘cause I know he’s really busy this week. And also being aware of what timings and things; getting a whole new computer system, so I didn’t want to disturb [him], you know, the MD. So I just wrote it all and sent it in. And he just sent it back and said “that’s fine, send it out”. So it’s kind of taking it away […] and he can still see that I am working on it even though we are not having like, that constant communication. So he knows that he’s always, like, on our minds and always doing things, and er…making it easier for him.
In listing the reasons why she cannot speak to her client (or vice versa), Emma appears to be engaging
in a deeper imaginary effort than John, and this may be driven by a level of anxiety about getting the
job done. ‘I didn’t want to disturb [him]’ and ‘making it easier for him’ denotes a submissive
IMAGININGTHELIVESOFOTHERS:EMPATHYINPUBLICRELATIONS
18
relationship, rather than one between equals. In contrast to this, taking control of a client relationship
sometimes involved the practitioner changing their personal attitude towards a client in order to feel
comfortable with the relationship and able to achieve results for that client. Alison’s account of dealing
with a ‘difficult’ client demonstrates the emotional and imaginary effort involved in a particularly
complex relational arrangement:
And so I went away and learnt a bit about what actually is it that she has to cover off in her job. And there are all these different areas, and it comes up all the time; every time I talk to her it comes up. She is always like: “Oh we had to deal with this big planning permission up here” and so she is always involved in these policy issues and stuff. Which is nothing to do with what we do. We are completely separate from that. And these things must be really time-consuming, and I know she is always really busy, she is always on the road. So now I’ve got a brilliant relationship with her. […] I’ve invested quite a lot of time in making sure that for example, I don’t blame her if we don’t get information through.
Through researching her client’s job, and imagining her situation, Alison had learned not to blame her
client for being unhelpful. In doing so, she had succeeded in changing her initial negative attitude
towards her client. Alison was subsequently congratulated by her bosses for the ‘brilliant’ relationship
with the client, and for succeeding where others had failed: ‘I’ve invested quite a lot of time in making
sure that for example, I don’t blame her if we don’t get information through’ suggests a complex and
dynamic navigation around the client’s own identity and status within her company, and the need to
find ways to ensure that the work ultimately gets done and the client is happy without the client’s direct
help in the process.
Discussion: what kind of empathy is suggested in public relations discourse?
Neoliberal discourses have been shown to permeate and shape all aspects of society, politics and
business so that the logic of the market becomes normalised and difficult to question (Pedwell, 2012,
Olson, 2013). Prevailing ontological assumptions that public relations is an organisational function
(Edwards, 2012) means that it is subject to neoliberal ‘regimes of truth’ about the profession and
business (Foucault, 1980). Therefore, the discourses of empathy are necessarily shaped, as well as
constrained, by the demands and the logic of the market and what constitutes permitted behaviour
within the range of discourses on offer. PR services operate as a sub-set of the UK’s large service
economy (CEBR, 2005) and the commercial focus of the PR agency environment permits the idea of
IMAGININGTHELIVESOFOTHERS:EMPATHYINPUBLICRELATIONS
19
employees commodifying their relational skills to improve business relationships. The concept of
empathy as a skill not only appeals to agency owners and managers in relation to improving
client/journalist relationships, and the possibility of seeing a better return on investment (ROI); it in
turn appeals to employees as ‘neoliberal selves’ who can build emotional capital, a marketable
commodity which can be transferred to their next employer (Illouz, 2007).
In the PR Moment blog the discourse of ‘forgetting your own ego’ (Table 1, discourse 2) suggests an
other-orientated empathy, in which the practitioner imagines not just themselves in a given situation,
but imagines the client, the journalist, or the ‘other’, in that situation, and from the other’s perspective
(Scheler, 1958; Bennett, 1998; Coplan, 2011). Other-orientated empathy is considered to be true
empathy (Coplan, 2011). Focusing on the client, as illustrated in the three practitioner narratives (John,
Emma, Alison), could be described as other-orientated empathy. However, within a business context,
this other-orientated empathy discourse will always be influenced, as Pedwell (2012) suggests, by
instrumentalism. A ‘client-first’ attitude produces a level of anxiety about the practitioner-client
relationship arising from frustrated attempts to get the job done on the client account. In all three
narratives, the client is absent or elusive and not always helpful, but there is still the possibility that
they will blame the PR practitioner for not achieving their objectives. This, in turn, prompts a desire for
the practitioner to manage the client relationship better by engaging in a considerable amount of
emotional labour, of which empathy is part (Hochschild, 1983).
The PR Moment discourse (see Table 1, discourse 4) warns that unless genuine empathy is practised,
a practitioner’s career is likely to be shortlived: fake empathy will be recognised by the ‘key target
recipient’. Practising impression management (Goffman, 1959), or ‘surface acting’ (Hochschild, 1983)
to display the appropriate demeanour towards the other person as required by the given situation, may
not be convincing enough. Advocates of true, other-centred empathy such as Coplan (2011) would
argue that impression management is an example of pseudo-empathy which has an ego-centric bias.
Asking questions of another person to ‘find out what makes them tick’ (see Table 1, discourse 2) would
be an example of pseudo-empathy and is perhaps best illustrated by John’s account of his client’s ferry
crossing. ‘Pseudo-empathy’ is hinted at by Culbertson (2009: 3) in his definition of the concept of role-
taking as ‘psyching-out’. And yet, the notion of intentional empathetic ‘perspective shifting’ in order to
share the psychological state of another person (i.e. genuine empathy and perhaps illustrated by
Alison’s account), is regarded by some as morally questionable (Goldie, 2011). Thus, both self-
IMAGININGTHELIVESOFOTHERS:EMPATHYINPUBLICRELATIONS
20
orientated empathy and other-orientated empathy raise ethical problems and have to be considered
within the context of the situation and the motives of the individual empathiser.
Much of the discussion of empathy has so far concentrated on interpersonal relationships in PR
agencies. The discussion of empathy in public relations literature, however, is focused at the more
abstract level of organisation-publics relationships. Here, the suggestion is that the public relations
practitioner, on behalf of their organisation, should use empathy to enter into dialogue with
stakeholders and publics (Kent and Taylor, 2002; Bruning, Dials and Shirka, 2008), as well as
demonstrate empathy with those affected in crisis situations (Martinelli and Briggs, 1998; Seeger,
2006). As already noted, Windahl and Signitzer (1992: 21) identified the problems of empathising with
audiences that are both ‘distant and heterogeneous’. Without the benefit of first-hand knowledge of the
audience, they argue, the communication planner must resort to likely unreliable proxies, such as
colleagues or relatives, on which to test their message. Prinz (2011) warns of the subjective bias
inherent in empathising with social groups that are dissimilar from ourselves, and that our images of
the ‘other’ are likely to be influenced by media representations at best. Without the benefit of research
data, or first-hand experience, the practitioner has only their preconceptions, prejudices and biases,
largely shaped by media sources, on which to draw. And yet the discourse of dialogue within the
literature (e.g. Kent and Taylor, 2002; Bruning, Dials and Shirka, 2008) suggests that organisations and
practitioners have a duty to build trust through empathy or understanding of the ‘other’: the target
publics of organisational communication. Setting aside the questions concerning the practical
implications of corporations engaging in dialogue with publics (Theunissen and Noordin, 2011),
perhaps what is really being discussed within the context of dialogue discourse is sympathy (Bennett,
1998) pseudo-empathy (Coplan, 2011), or instrumental empathy (Pedwell, 2012), exhibited through a
public demonstration of concern for the other, including efforts to consult on matters of mutual interest
and concern, and corporate apologies following a crisis. But given that organisational interests are
likely to prevail over publics’ interests within the context of power relations and the need to further
self-interested corporate agendas, true empathy, as described in an interpersonal sense, is likely to be
elusive, even though the demand for it is great. Kent and Taylor’s (2011) intercultural, co-
constructionist approach to dialogue and empathy enacted by PR practitioners operating within a global
context is perhaps the most convincing and worthwhile avenue for further exploration, and comes close
to Calloway-Thomas’ (2010) intercultural definition of genuine, other-centred empathy. However Kent
IMAGININGTHELIVESOFOTHERS:EMPATHYINPUBLICRELATIONS
21
and Taylor (2011) do suggest that first-hand experience of other cultures would benefit communication
professionals, alongside frameworks and theories that contribute to what they term a ‘third culture’
orientation.
As already noted, while true empathy with the ‘other’ may have transformative potential for the
individual as empathiser with disadvantaged, marginalised or oppressed groups in achieving social
justice goals, it is not in the interests of organisations to embrace this level of publics-identification in
casting the role of the practitioner as organisational activist (Holtzhausen, 2012); unless, of course, the
organisation is itself part of civil society or has explicit values and policies (e.g. CSR) which are
consistent with empathetic concern for the other.
Conclusion
In this article I have sought to address the question: ‘what kind of empathy is suggested in public
relations discourse?’ This question resulted from the burgeoning interest in emotion and empathy in
both the academy and in popular discourse. This paper challenges taken-for-granted notions of
empathy in public relations practice and in the public relations literature. Through an analysis of texts
including an online blog and practitioner accounts of their handling of professional relationships,
notions of empathy in PR practice were examined in relation to literature in which ‘imaginary effort’ as
a socio-cultural conceptualisation of empathy was identified. A socio-cultural lens enables analysis of
contexts in which empathy discourse takes place: in this case, public relations agency practice. My
analysis revealed that while empathy in PR is discursively framed as a desirable skill for practitioners,
reinforcing neo-liberal notions of the self-enterprising individual and emotional competence/capital,
the type of empathy suggested within a business context is inevitably instrumental and codified in its
pursuit of business goals. The empathy suggested in three practitioner accounts involved complex
imaginary effort on the part of the practitioner in order to understand the perspective of the other, and
was dependent upon the situation or problem at hand. However I question the desirability for
practitioners to engage in other-centred emotional empathy using intercultural communication
conceptualisations and call for a re-framing of empathy, for example, as ‘role-taking’ or ‘social
perspective taking’ to emphasise cognitive definitions of other-orientated practice. These concepts do
not exclude the possibility of emotional empathy and feelings of genuine human concern in
IMAGININGTHELIVESOFOTHERS:EMPATHYINPUBLICRELATIONS
22
professional relationships, but neither do they connote the commodification of feeling, with which the
concept of empathy is inexorably loaded within a commercial context.
The empirical evidence presented is limited to the analysis of one online blog and the analysis of
three illustrative accounts drawn from an empirical study that involved a process of in-depth interviews
with six regional PR agency practitioners in the UK. A richer data set and analysis may have produced
different outcomes. Nevertheless, the illustrations presented in this article, together with the literature
reviewed, potentially open up further lines of inquiry on emotion and empathy in public relations
which has hitherto received very little conceptual attention and empirical analysis. While in this paper I
have argued for socio-cultural perspectives of emotion and empathy in public relations, inspiration for
further work (as indicated in methodologies such as Clark’s) could well emerge from the arts and
humanities. Such work could more meaningfully embrace the emotional ‘turn’ and the paradox of
empathy.
IMAGININGTHELIVESOFOTHERS:EMPATHYINPUBLICRELATIONS
23
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